Four Israelis — including a pregnant woman — were killed Tuesday near Hebron in the West Bank in a shooting for which the militant wing of Hamas claimed responsibility, officials said.

The incident occurred near Bani Naim junction, the largely Palestinian territory where Jews have settled in places like Hebron, Israel Defense Forces spokeswoman Lt. Col. Avital Leibowitz said. The victims were in a car on Route 60, the IDF website said.

Guy Gonen, a paramedic who was one of the first people on the scene, said the car was sprayed with bullets.

Izzedin Al-Qassam Brigades — the military wing of Hamas — claimed “complete” responsibility for the attack, according to a statement on its website.

Abu Obeida, a spokesman for the group, confirmed responsibility for the attack in an interview with the Hamas radio station.

Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, congratulated the attackers, saying the attack was a normal reaction to what he called “the crime of occupation.” Hamas, which controls Gaza, opposes direct talks and the continued existence of Israel.

That is the paradox of Fallujah, the city that saw the bitterest fighting of America’s seven years in Iraq. Its inhabitants regard the Americans with hatred, but say they represent their only insurance against the enemies by whom they are surrounded: al-Qaeda, the Iraqi government, and Iranian agents.

Asimov, and specifically the Foundation trilogy, was my great inspiration; I became an economist because I wanted to be a psychohistorian, saving civilization through the mathematics of human behavior.

The psychohistorians use mathematical models to predict the course of human civilization, and the founder of the science of psychohistory, Prof. Hari Seldon, takes on a kind of godlike role in guiding human history. Of particular interest are what are known as “Seldon crises,” which, as Wikipedia sums it up, “are part of the field of psychohistory, and refer to a social and political situation that, to be successfully surmounted, would eventually leave only one possible, inevitable, course of action.” One unique solution to a sociopolitical problem, determined with mathematical precision by a very powerful professor with friends in government. Talk about your fatal conceits!

Fatal for more than the principals.

Asimov and Krugman both believe(d) that human behavior can be (and ought to be) beneficially managed by disinterested technicians who use the Amazing Power of Science to solve all problems, right all wrongs, and immanentize the eschaton.

Asimov makes this explicit in his Lucky Starr novels, where the solar system is ruled by the Council of Science (of which protagonist Lucky Starr is a member), but it runs throughout his work: All we need do is let the Smartest Guys in the Room (of whom the Good Doctor Asimov, ahem, was naturally one) run everything, and the rest of us can get along about our business, in the sure and certain knowledge that everything will turn out as well as it can. Marxists and other proponents of centrally planned economies suffer from the same delusion, with results as we have seen them.

The problem with Krugman’s worldview — the basic problem with managerial statism — is that it calls for masterminds, and we do not have any. But Krugman aspires to the role, and the fruits of his aspirations, and those of others, are all around us.

In his January State of the Union speech, President Obama woefully declared that “each time lobbyists game the system or politicians tear each other down instead of lifting this country up, we lose faith.” But by the following month, The Hill was reporting that “despite his push to rein in special interests, President Barack Obama sparked a boom on K Street.” Lobbyists for the health care industry in particular were given an enormous boost in Washington as the health care bill rolled slowly through Congress and then moved on to the regulatory phase.

New reports by Palestinian rights groups highlight a surprising symmetry in the abuse that the U.S.-backed government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank and his Iranian-supported rivals Hamas in Gaza inflict on each other.

If there aren’t any Americans or Jews to kill, Muslims gladly kill each other. No wonder they are loved on the Left, which was feeling deprived now that they didn’t have the old Soviet empire any more.

So. We have a legislator named Eddie Bernice Johnson (D, TX-30), member of the Congressional Black Caucus, and thus one of the people whose responsibility it is to hand out partial college scholarships to worthy recipients. A worthy project, to be sure: good policy, good politics, good publicity. There is – sensibly – a non-nepotism rule; and there is – also sensibly – a rule that this money is to be given to students in your district. But there is apparently no oversight at all over who gets the money, which is why Rep. Johnson was able to use this money gave 15 scholarships to six ineligible kids – four grandchildren and two kids of an aide – and none of them live in the district. Important point, there: even if grandchildren and children of aides don’t count under the anti-nepotism rule (an argument which the CBC itself rejects), the point of the whole thing is to foster local education. Rep. Johnson’s defense? She’s a nine-term Congresswoman who somehow missed the fact that she wasn’t supposed to give CBC scholarships to out-of-district family members.

She’s a female black Democrat politician, a gold-standard victim and member of the Crust, and therefore above criticism.

Please remember this when Rep. Johnson is defended – and she will be. They’ll talk about her relative lack of personal wealth; they’ll talk about how she at least didn’t actually steal the money; they’ll talk about the relatively small amounts involved; they’ll talk about the need of those kids for those scholarships; and they’ll undoubtedly call people racists for even broaching the subject of yet another member of the CBC who’s involved in shenanigans. What they won’t do is admit that Rep. Johnson has no right to be defended. She was given money dedicated to bettering the lives of her constituents. She instead used it to better the lives of her family and subordinates.

Muslims would understand, because that’s what they’d do. Normal Americans? Not so much.

Remember just a few months ago when every leftist in America screamed whenever anyone on the right accused Obama and the Democrats of being socialists? You’d think we’d just called them something profane other than describing who they actually are.

Now, here we have two lefty feminists convinced one of Sarah Palin’s worst traits is that she bashes socialism. Voters delivered themselves into the hands of San Francisco Democrats without realizing it and are now desperately trying to extricate themselves.

When the cockroaches no longer fear the light, then you know it’s getting bad.

What do homebuyers mean when they say ‘bad schools?’ Occasionally, they do have highly specific criticisms: the principal might be disorganized, the teachers unmotivated, the textbooks incomprehensible. Overwhelmingly, though, Americans use the term ‘bad schools’ to mean—‘bad students.’

That’s the single most important key to the ‘two-income trap.’ Parents spend huge amounts of money to keep their children away from dim and dangerous fellow students.

That bad students can make a school bad is a lesson that tens of millions of Americans besides Weissberg have learned the hard way. Yet, when it comes to thinking about education, we’re not supposed to draw any insights from our own lives. In contrast, you can win fame and, if not fortune, at least a pleasant career by loudly proclaiming that bad schools make good students bad.

Don’t spit in our face and tell us it’s raining. Over seventy percent of Americans oppose the Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero. We oppose it because it is an insult, an offense to the memories of those who were killed in the name of Islam at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. We oppose it because it will be understood all over the Islamic world as a victory mosque marking that heinous mass-murder nine years ago. And we oppose it because the mosque leaders have an ever-lengthening record of dishonesty — dishonesty about their intentions, their funding, their support for jihad terrorism, and more.

For all the talk of their support for women, there is no one on a national level doing for liberals what Sarah Palin is doing for conservatives in this election. Who is helping the Democratic women win seats? The highest ranking woman in the Democratic Party? No, Nancy is focused on investigating the Ground Zero Mosque detractors and still trying to sell a health care plan that has already been passed. … Instead of finding better candidates to run against the fresh crop of small government advocates, Nancy Pelosi is cherrypicking the candidates she can throw under the bus this fall.

And don’t get me started with Hillary Clinton.

The problem with women of the Left is that they’re too tightly focused on forcing their way into what they view as the Old Boy’s Club; they don’t realize that, once they’ve forced their way in, it merely makes them Old Boys with boobs.

There have been a lot of unsurprising news stories lately. Rod Blagojevich going on TV. Tiger Woods and his wife divorcing. The economy racing along like an elderly tortoise. And the Food and Drug Administration saying the salmonella outbreak proves the agency needs more power.

We should have seen that coming. In the private sector, entities that fall short of doing their jobs find themselves forced to shrink. In the public sector, the opposite is typically true. Failure is an option, and often a beneficial one.

The Federal Reserve Board and Treasury facilitated the 2008 financial crisis? Then obviously we have no choice but to give them even more responsibility. The Securities and Exchange Commission let Bernie Madoff rob investors? A bigger SEC will be a smarter SEC.

It’s true that the FDA is charged with assuring food safety. But really, the government can’t do that. The task is too big and too complex. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to do it, because the pressures of competition force producers to make sure their goods are clean and wholesome.

What goes curiously unnoticed is that egg suppliers and grocery stores have nothing to gain from sickening their customers—and a lot to lose. It doesn’t take many obvious hygiene lapses for a company to get a bad reputation, and a bad reputation can be catastrophic.

In 1971, a New York man died of botulism after eating a can of Bon Vivant soup. If you’ve never heard of Bon Vivant soup, there’s a simple explanation: In no time at all, the company was bankrupt and the brand was as defunct as William McKinley.

The hot, dry conditions in May and June allowed aerial researchers to identify ancient sites visible through the appearance of crop marks in one of the busiest years for such finds since the long, hot summer of 1976.

Crop marks are produced when barley or wheat growing over buried features develop at a different rate from those growing next to them because differences in the depth of soil and the availability of nutrients.

Ground Zero workers are on the hook to pay steep interest on money their lawyers borrowed from a group of investors that include Silver and his law partners, The Post has learned.

Silver’s partners at the Weitz & Luxenberg law firm are top board members of a business that quietly loaned money at 18 percent a year to the law firm representing some 9,800 Ground Zero workers with toxic-illness suits against the city.

Apple recently licensed Liquidmetal Technology’s IP for use in consumer electronics. Liquidmetal Technologies is one of the leading companies trying to commercialize space-age metal alloys that are extremely hard and lightweight but can be processed as easily as plastics. NASA has said Liquidmetal is “poised to redefine materials science as we know it in the 21st century.”

In addition, there are the capabilities of Liquidmetal itself. The alloys, also known as bulk metallic glasses, are as strong as titanium but use only one-third of the material. It can be mixed with very small amounts of precious metals to make jewelry-like finishes, or optimized for functions such as an antenna. And while titanium scratches and magnesium corrodes, Liquidmetal is scratch and corrosion proof, and resistant to greasy marks.

“You get fingerprints all over them and they just disappear,” Merkel says. “You could add gold or silver to get a beautiful look you’ve never seen before.”

A transhuman science fiction game set aboard a space settlement in the Saturnian system. Several generations live on FreeMarket Station: the sons, daughters and grandchildren of the Originals; immigrant travelers from elsewhere in our solar system; and designed-to-order humans fabricated in 3d matter printers. It’s a world without death, without poverty, without sickness and without any need for laws. What will you do with forever?

Consider this example. Suppose I say to you in English that “I spent yesterday evening with a neighbor.” You may well wonder whether my companion was male or female, but I have the right to tell you politely that it’s none of your business. But if we were speaking French or German, I wouldn’t have the privilege to equivocate in this way, because I would be obliged by the grammar of language to choose between voisin or voisine; Nachbar or Nachbarin. These languages compel me to inform you about the sex of my companion whether or not I feel it is remotely your concern. This does not mean, of course, that English speakers are unable to understand the differences between evenings spent with male or female neighbors, but it does mean that they do not have to consider the sexes of neighbors, friends, teachers and a host of other persons each time they come up in a conversation, whereas speakers of some languages are obliged to do so.

On the other hand, English does oblige you to specify certain types of information that can be left to the context in other languages. If I want to tell you in English about a dinner with my neighbor, I may not have to mention the neighbor’s sex, but I do have to tell you something about the timing of the event: I have to decide whether we dined, have been dining, are dining, will be dining and so on. Chinese, on the other hand, does not oblige its speakers to specify the exact time of the action in this way, because the same verb form can be used for past, present or future actions. Again, this does not mean that the Chinese are unable to understand the concept of time. But it does mean they are not obliged to think about timing whenever they describe an action.

When your language routinely obliges you to specify certain types of information, it forces you to be attentive to certain details in the world and to certain aspects of experience that speakers of other languages may not be required to think about all the time. And since such habits of speech are cultivated from the earliest age, it is only natural that they can settle into habits of mind that go beyond language itself, affecting your experiences, perceptions, associations, feelings, memories and orientation in the world.

An examination of the semi-Luddite proclivities of the premier Voice of the Crust.

Is checking your email while you’re waiting in line at the grocery store really hurting your ability to learn?

That’s the basic premise of Matt Richtel’s very popular New York Times story this week, “Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Valuable Downtime.” The article couches its arguments in the language of science, but its actual scientific content is pretty sparse.

And these are the ‘progressives’. Like ‘Democratic Party’, a more entertaining oxymoron has not been seen on this planet for time out of mind.

As career officers will tell you, drive, determination, and a willingness to try something new are the key requirements in a competitive world. This lesson has certainly been taken to heart by the Somali fishermen who, armed with Kalashnikovs and RPGs, have made a career switch to piracy.

As a result of their activities, insurance premiums have shot up. Many shipping companies avoid the Suez Canal and now send their vessels around the Horn of Africa, which adds to fuel costs. Others hire private security firms to go with their ships. A multinational force patrols the Gulf of Aden. But on several occasions, when patrol ships have captured pirates, they have had to release them again because no one wants to prosecute them, as they are likely to be stuck with them, once they have served their time (Somalia is regarded as too dangerous a place to which to repatriate them). This, in the words of Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, “sends the wrong signal.” As a result of American pressure, in the first piracy case to come to trial in Europe, a Dutch court in June sentenced five Somali pirates to five years in jail, which shipping analysts see as unlikely to deter future attacks. Predictably, the pirates have asked for asylum and to have their families sent over upon their release. More sensible efforts to set up regional courts to prosecute captured pirates are ongoing.

The economies of the city-states of Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and Sale in Morocco were all built on privateering and slave labor, and all owed allegiance to Istanbul as outposts of the Ottoman Empire.

And, needless to say, all were Muslims. But that’s no surprise – Islam has never, ever had a problem either with slavery or with robbing unbelievers. Mohammed himself indulged in both activities, and Muslims regard him as the Perfect Man. (Bit of cognitive dissonance for black people who choke on George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as slave-owners but embrace Islam … or would be, if they gave it any thought. Not to mention the Muslims running the West African slave trade.)

Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D., Texas), a long-serving congresswoman from Dallas, improperly awarded thousands of dollars in college scholarships from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, violating nepotism and ethics rules by giving the funds to multiple relatives and the children of top aide Rod Givens.

My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Must be part of the Culture of Corruption that Nancy Pelosi was on about recently … oh, wait, she was talking about Republicans….

One theme in the recent MSM hand-wringing about America’s alleged “Islamophobia” is the notion that Americans are giving Muslims a more difficult time now than they did in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. The Washington Post conceded that public opinion surveys don’t show a meaningful change, but it quoted unnamed “religious scholars and other experts” who find the change in tone “striking.” And it quoted a Muslim in Tennessee who recalled nothing but good will from the “locals” back in 2001, but who now sees palpable hostility following the decision to build a sprawling new mosque complex in the area.

Since then, we have learned that the radical ideology behind 9/11 is not quite as alien as we thought. Some portion of the American Muslim community – presumably small, but we don’t know how small – is drawn to it.

Moreover, what looks like a considerable portion of those who hold themselves out (and are held out by the MSM) as leaders of American Muslims refuse to disassociate themselves from terrorist groups. They don’t countenance al Qaeda, though they do blame America for that outfit’s terrorist acts. But they won’t repudiate other bloody terrorists, notably Hamas.

Thus, while only the most highly informed Americans probably could have imagined terrorist plotting or even pro-terrorist rhetoric in an American place of worship back in 2001, many can imagine it now, and with reason.

Armey, who holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Oklahoma, has high praise for Beck’s ability to provide viewers with a “more true and accurate history of the United States.”

“We see it documented at levels of rigor that, in fact, one would expect out of Ph.D. dissertations — [it is] serious, scholarly work,” Armey says. “[Liberal critics] don’t have to argue with Glenn Beck. They have to argue with his documentation and they can’t match that level of rigor.”

Yes, he’s trying, as Moynihan memorably put it, to learn history and teach it at the same time. But so what? Like the dumpy woman with low self-esteem we all dream of, Beck makes up in enthusiasm what he lacks in natural gifts. I like the sense that he’s bringing you his findings as fast as they come in. You get the impression that two weeks ago Beck had never heard of Woodrow Wilson, yet now he has figured out that Woodrow Wilson was one of the most evil people of the 20th century, and he wants to tell everybody. There’s something fun about that, a performance that invites you to help fill in details and fix errors. It’s certainly something you don’t see anywhere else on TV, a medium populated almost entirely by people who are more cocksure about everything than I am about anything.

We should be clear that the Tea Party is not promoting Communism (an idea which turned out to be really bad), but rather that the Tea Party movement represents the rising class consciousness of the Proletariat, as predicted by Marx.

The modern left doesn’t promote the interests of the Proletariat; it’s the Lumpenproletariat that the left is most concerned about. The Democratic Party relies upon the Lumpenproletariat to win elections, and once elected uses the power of government to advance its own moral agenda which is adverse to the interests of the Proletariat.

The people who write columns in newspapers opining how much they hate the Tea Party movement come from the class most closely analogous to what Marx called the Petit-Bourgeoisie.

Educated, well off, respected in the community. Decent fellows. Then, if poverty and lack of education didn’t cause their jihad, there must be something else. And gee, this is always so awkward: if those factors can’t explain it, there must be something else.